All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[worstblogever]

Thom Tillis

Welcome to what is the 867th original profile here at “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day”, where we’ll be discussing the U.S. Senator from North Carolina, Thom Tillis, who is up for re-election in November, since he first got his Senate seat back in the 2014 elections.

Prior to heading to Washington, D.C., Tillis served in the North Carolina House of Representatives from 2007-2014. Now, we don’t want to just focus on Tillis’ career in our nation’s capital in this profile, and point out that North Carolina’s state government not-coincidentally went full-on Looney Tunes right around the point where the Tea Party began influencing the GOP and putting partisan tools like Tillis into seats of power. Tillis was allowed to run for re-election unopposed in 2008, 2010, and 2012. And from his role as House Speaker of the North Carolina House of Representatives, the entire state legislature got gerrymandered into a false majority, and North Carolina Republicans started passing laws like stricter Voter ID bills (while Tillis admitted there was not statistical evidence of fraud to justify the need for it) and votes to cut the number of early voting days (aimed at suppressing the vote and maintaining that false majority further that were all turned away by appeals courts), an amendment to the state Constitution to ban same sex marriage (and he hasn’t changed his position on same sex marriage even after the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling), the notorious “Motorcycle Safety Abortion Bill” (where upon a bill requiring helmets for motorcyclists was amended to become one of the harshest anti-choice measures in all the country).

Perhaps his most shocking moment as a state legislator was in 2011, when he gave his thoughts on using a “divide and conquer” strategy to combat people who receive government assistance:

"At some point, we'll have to say, 'First kid, we'll give you a pass. Second, third or fourth kid, you're on your own. What we have to do is find a way to divide and conquer the people who are on assistance. We have to show respect for that woman who has cerebral palsy and had no choice in her condition that needs help and we should help.
And we need to get those folks to look down at those people who choose to get into a position that makes them dependent on the government and say at some point, 'You're on your own. We may end up taking care of those babies but we're not going to take care of you."

Tillis never apologized for those remarks, instead claiming he “misspoke” a bit, and then going on to pledge his support for welfare drug testing (which repeatedly has proven not just a failed policy, but courts rule it an unconstitutional one).

After stacking the deck for himself with the laws he pushed for passage as a legislator to suppress the vote in his favor in the years prior, Thom Tillis did made his run for Senate in 2014, and spent the months leading up to the election fear-mongering about the spread of the Ebola virus into the United States, saying that not enough was being done by the Obama administration to stop travel from Africa. So it will come as little surprise that now when he’s up for re-election in 2020, he’s mum about the god-awful response the Trump administration has had to the spread of COVID-19. We should probably also mention Tillis employed a data firm you may have heard of that year called Cambridge Analytica, who may have already used the data from a Facebook primary breach to help him win office with a meager 48.2% over Democratic Senator Kay Hagan, the smallest winning total for a Senator from North Carolina in an election, ever.

Now Senator Tillis, over the past six years, somehow he has dug in and become even more conservative, not just maintaining his Personhood stance on abortion but also that he he drafted legislation that would overturn the Affordable Care Act with the promise of still protecting pre-existing conditions, but had to pull it out of embarrassment that it was so poorly written it would just strip protections from almost everyone with them. He has cravenly caved in support of Donald Trump’s immigration policies like the spineless toad he is, for fear he would lose a primary election this year. He denies the existence of climate change, calling it “not a fact” and was the first U.S. Senator to write to Donald Trump asking him to pull out of the Paris Climate Accords. On guns, Tillis is extreme enough to have an “A+” rating from the NRA, probably because he was willing to even vote against a bill that would have prevented anyone on a terror watch list from purchasing a firearm.

[worstblogever]

A quick glance of some of Tillis’ worst votes in the Senate include:

• January 6th, 2015: Thom Tillis’ first act in the Senate is to co-sponsor and vote for the Keystone XL Pipeline.
• Sept. 24th, 2015: Tillis votes to defund Planned Parenthood, based on conservative outrage over a video concocted by the Center for Medical Progress that had been repeatedly debunked by investigators, and eventually resulted in the CMP being hit with criminal charges.
• December 3rd, 2015: Sen. Tillis votes to protect the right of people on terror watch lists to still buy guns and explosives.
• June 20th, 2016: Thom Tillis votes to protect the right for people to transfer their guns and explosives to people on terror watch lists.
• July 25th, 2017: Tillis votes for the BCRA, aka Trumpcare, that would leave tens of millions without health insurance and void coverage for people with pre-existing conditions.
• December 20th, 2017: Sen. Tillis votes for the GOP Tax Plan/Scam, that places the burden of taxation upon the working class and almost none upon our country’s billionaires.
• October 6th, 2018: Thom Tillis votes to put accused rapist Brett Kavanaugh onto the Supreme Court.
• February 14th, 2019: Tillis votes to approve the nomination of William Barr to be the country’s Attorney General, even though he was involved in the Iran-Contra scandal in the 1980s. (SPOILER ALERT: He’s still crooked as a snake with scoliosis).
• January 31st, 2020: Sen. Tillis votes against witnesses being allowed in the impeachment trial of Donald Trump, effectively making it a “trial”.
• February 5th, 2020: Thom Tillis votes against the impeachment of Donald Trump, in spite of the mountain of evidence showing that he solicited foreign assistance from Ukraine in the 2020 elections.
• February 25th, 2020: Tillis co-sponsors and votes for the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, an insane piece of anti-choice legislation that would ask abortion providers to try to admit aborted fetuses to a hospital if they were “alive” after the procedure, which is medically impossible given the age that abortions can be performed at.

At this point, it’s clear that Thom Tillis is only interested in the well-being of the richest Americans, and that people might want to look into voting for his Democratic opponent, Cal Cunningham, in November. Heck, if you’re not from North Carolina, help flip the Senate by donating to his campaign. Because as long as tools like him are in the Senate, he’s going to advocate for a regressive agenda.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

I have a neighbor who attended a funeral in Seattle in February, then came home to Arizona to fall severely ill. Her husband (who was briefly sick, but nowhere near as bad as she was) got her to the hospital, and she spent a month there in intensive care with what doctors called a "respiratory virus of unknown origin". She was never tested for COVID-19, but they kept her in isolation to be safe. She lived...

But she is not confirmed or ruled out as a COVID-19 case. Nobody in her family got tested, because Arizona doesn't have tests. We're 51st out of 50 states (because Puerto Rico has also tested more than our state).

This is the pattern I'm seeing in my own job at the VA Hospital as well. We weren't testing in house until the second half of February, and they were only sending specimens to Long Beach to be tested if the patient was being admitted. We just got the Coronavirus Antibody testing last week... which for both tests, is about 60-90 days later than we needed to have it ready to go. We weren't giving staff temperature checks prior to coming to work until April. We weren't given orders to wear masks at this facility until May. Prior to that, they were telling us to do it only with patients who were known to have Covid-19, and I'm like, "HOW? We aren't testing them fast enough, and you can have the virus and be asymptomatic. ANYONE WALKING THROUGH THE DOOR FOR ANYTHING CAN HAVE IT."

When I give my opinion that there's a failure in leadership to have reacted to this crisis, I'm not just reacting to the obvious headlines. I'm telling you what I've seen on the ground. I don't know how I haven't been infected yet... but whenever they get around for testing me for the antibody, I'm not going to be shocked to learn I already was, stayed asymptomatic, and worked through it at risk to others without even knowing.

There's a reason 80,000 people and more are sick. You don't skip past the rest of the world's death toll by a fluke.

Jesus. And that same sort of clusterfuck is probably happening at every VA facility in the country. The colossal failure of this hamfisted administration to act on COVID-19 is flat out criminal, and that's not hyperbole. Take care of yourself, man! THAT'S AN ORDER!

[worstblogever]

Jesus. And that same sort of clusterfuck is probably happening at every VA facility in the country. The colossal failure of this hamfisted administration to act on COVID-19 is flat out criminal, and that's not hyperbole. Take care of yourself, man! THAT'S AN ORDER!

Copy that, Ghost Rider.

[The Cool Thatguy]

I have a neighbor who attended a funeral in Seattle in February, then came home to Arizona to fall severely ill. Her husband (who was briefly sick, but nowhere near as bad as she was) got her to the hospital, and she spent a month there in intensive care with what doctors called a "respiratory virus of unknown origin". She was never tested for COVID-19, but they kept her in isolation to be safe. She lived...

But she is not confirmed or ruled out as a COVID-19 case. Nobody in her family got tested, because Arizona doesn't have tests. We're 51st out of 50 states (because Puerto Rico has also tested more than our state).

This is the pattern I'm seeing in my own job at the VA Hospital as well. We weren't testing in house until the second half of February, and they were only sending specimens to Long Beach to be tested if the patient was being admitted. We just got the Coronavirus Antibody testing last week... which for both tests, is about 60-90 days later than we needed to have it ready to go. We weren't giving staff temperature checks prior to coming to work until April. We weren't given orders to wear masks at this facility until May. Prior to that, they were telling us to do it only with patients who were known to have Covid-19, and I'm like, "HOW? We aren't testing them fast enough, and you can have the virus and be asymptomatic. ANYONE WALKING THROUGH THE DOOR FOR ANYTHING CAN HAVE IT."

When I give my opinion that there's a failure in leadership to have reacted to this crisis, I'm not just reacting to the obvious headlines. I'm telling you what I've seen on the ground. I don't know how I haven't been infected yet... but whenever they get around for testing me for the antibody, I'm not going to be shocked to learn I already was, stayed asymptomatic, and worked through it at risk to others without even knowing.

There's a reason 80,000 people and more are sick. You don't skip past the rest of the world's death toll by a fluke.

Yeah, that's what scares me about all this. Without testing, it's impossible to know how many people are actually infected. I'd hate to think that I might have gotten someone sick, so my ass is home

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Yeah, that's what scares me about all this. Without testing, it's impossible to know how many people are actually infected. I'd hate to think that I might have gotten someone sick, so my ass is home

In my opinion, what's scarier than patient zero level carriers are the asymptomatic crowd, which could be you, me, ANYBODY. I work from home, only go out when necessary (exercise, weekly grocery shopping), severely limit my exposure to the public, and yet, I can't help but worry if I could pass the virus to someone without even knowing I have it. That's unnerving.

[worstblogever]

If memory serves, 60% of the hundreds of sailors on board the aircraft carrier the U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt tested positive for Covid-19, but were asymptomatic.

Think about what that means for the general population right this minute. When proper antibody testing is available, there are a lot of people who are going to find out they were unknowing carriers.

[The Cool Thatguy]

If memory serves, 60% of the hundreds of sailors on board the aircraft carrier the U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt tested positive for Covid-19, but were asymptomatic.

Think about what that means for the general population right this minute. When proper antibody testing is available, there are a lot of people who are going to find out they were unknowing carriers.

Only 60% seems low, given the conditions on a carrier.

But yeah, once we get proper testing, most everyone is going to be surprised.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

If memory serves, 60% of the hundreds of sailors on board the aircraft carrier the U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt tested positive for Covid-19, but were asymptomatic.

Think about what that means for the general population right this minute. When proper antibody testing is available, there are a lot of people who are going to find out they were unknowing carriers.

I was in the Navy for twenty years (1976-1996), nine of those years spent on ships, and I can tell you from experience that social distancing on ships is flat out impossible, especially when it comes to crew quarters with dozens of sailors crammed into small sleeping areas, and that lack of space is even worse on submarines. Anyone who thinks the virus has been limited to only one ship is dangerously naïve, COVID-19 has the potential to raise havoc throughout the fleet.

[shooshoomanjoe]

Apparently White House staff get tested daily now. I guess there aren't enough tests for the rest of us because the WH has been hoarding them.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Apparently White House staff get tested daily now. I guess there aren't enough tests for the rest of us because the WH has been hoarding them.

I'm sure hardcore Trumpanzees are saying: "I don't mind if I don't get tested! The god emperor Donald Trump is more important than I am! I'm ready to die for the great Orange One! He must live so he can continue owning the libs!"

[worstblogever]

Only 60% seems low, given the conditions on a carrier.

But yeah, once we get proper testing, most everyone is going to be surprised.

60% of those infected were asymptomatic, was what I read.

Mind you, that's with a bunch of largely healthy young men and women fit to serve.

[The Cool Thatguy]

60% of those infected were asymptomatic, was what I read.

Mind you, that's with a bunch of largely healthy young men and women fit to serve.

Ah, okay. Yeah, fair point.

I've been sick only 3 times in my life. I'm more concerned about being asymptomatic than getting infected, personally.

[Tendrin]

https://fenton.egnyte.com/dl/2biIpycdrr/

Biden has, according to Hart Research, opened up a nine point polling lead in battle ground states, and those stares are tipping Democratic for the senate as well.

But, yeah, sure, Trump's a shoe in.

What's the point: Biden's lead is about as steady as it can possibly be. Not only is he up 6 points over the last month or so, but the average of polls since the beginning of the year has him ahead by 6 points. Moreover, all the polls taken since the beginning of 2019 have him up 6 points.

The steadiness in the polls is record breaking. Biden's advantage is the steadiest in a race with an incumbent running since at least 1944. That could mean it'll be harder to change the trajectory of the race going forward, though this remains more than close enough that either candidate could easily win…

The bottom line is that while steadiness in the 2020 race so far projects forward to minimal movement from here on out, it doesn't in any way guarantee Biden a win. There's still a range of results possible.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/10/polit...ing/index.html

But sure. Trump's a shoe in.

[worstblogever]

https://fenton.egnyte.com/dl/2biIpycdrr/

Biden has, according to Hart Research, opened up a nine point polling lead in battle ground states, and those stares are tipping Democratic for the senate as well.

But, yeah, sure, Trump's a shoe in.



https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/10/polit...ing/index.html

But sure. Trump's a shoe in.

Saw someone else have analysis on Biden's lead, and someone pointed out that it's historically the steadiest of any challenger to an incumbent president. Like, going back since the fall, it's been at 6-7%, and holding. No matter what bulls*** stories are cooked up against Joe, or Hunter Biden, or whatever f*** ups Trump has. If it's finally not just stable, but that he's going to start pulling away... this could be a blowout in November.